Tag: Labour

I’m going to discuss the UK General Election, because someone has to put a stop to all the nonsense about it.

So Theresa May, the UK “Prime Minister” (that gets inverted commas because she’s had the job for 5 minutes and she was never voted in), has stated there is going to be a general election in June. We only had one last year, but since she wasn’t voted in, you’d think this was a good thing. In reality, that means that all the other political parties have under two months to campaign. Current polls show that Conservatives (sort of our version of the US Rebublicans… maybe) have a lot more support than any other party: 45%, compared to 27% for Labour (sort of our version of the US Liberals… ish) who are the next nearest party (we have about 5 main parties and a load of others, besides).

The news of this election has filled the 18-30 demographic (my age group) with lots of false hope that they might be able to prevent Brexit, despite the fact that it’s irreversible at this point. It’s sort of like someone trying to stop a car crash while the car is flying through the air at 90 miles per hour, claiming it’s going to be fine because the vehicle hasn’t hit anything yet. I mean, there are a crazy amount of things this past year that our age group has clung to and gone “Brexit can’t happen because of X, Y or Z” and it’s still happening.

Now, the thing is, everyone’s spreading around this “Here’s how to vote to stop Brexit” spreadsheet, where someone’s basically checked what political party is voted in, for every given area of the UK. If the party in your area is Labour, you are supposed to vote for them. If it’s Liberal Democrat (also sort of liberals), vote them, green party (kinda liberals too)… and so on. It’s not very clever or revolutionary, and to be perfectly honest it’s not going to help.

See, there’s this glaring issue with this plan. Labour are NOT GOING TO STOP BREXIT. Nor are they going to be better placed to get us a better deal. That’s like saying that one pimp is going to get us more money for being assfucked than another pimp, because the other one talks to the common people occasionally.

A lot of people believe in Labour because They Supported the Trade Unions in The 1970s and 1980s (also sometimes explained as, “My Dad Was A Coal Miner/Steelworker/Factory Worker…”). The trouble is, most of those politicians are dead and the party has changed immeasurably since then. This is the political party that took us to Iraq then pretended it was all Tony Blair’s idea and was never properly held accountable. Nobody ever gets held accountable in politics, and they never will, despite all the posturing of the 18-30 year olds on Facebook. We don’t live in a world of justice, good doesn’t triumph over evil, and democracy isn’t automatically better than a benevolent dictatorship. Sorry.

The other issue with the Labour party is that, since Jeremy Corbyn got made party leader, they have NEVER STOPPED INFIGHTING. I mean, seriously, they are the most unstable and argumentative party, so at this point they stand for literally nothing. Look at what happened when they called a leadership election barely 6 months ago (because some people in the Labour party with positions of power don’t like Corbyn) and, when the polls revealed that Corbyn would be voted leader again, someone in the Labour party decided to get rid of 300,000 members — or more, the true extent of this was never proven — because those people had all joined in support of Corbyn. The whole thing made no sense and went against their own rules. They also excluded those people from party meetings and then increased the cost to join the Labour party so only people with a particular amount of money could cast a vote. I don’t know who has decided to do all this, but it has culminated in the suggestion that the Labour party will demand ANOTHER leadership contest either at the same time or immediately after the general election. Don’t delude yourselves. A VOTE FOR LABOUR IS NOT A VOTE FOR CORBYN. It’s a vote for some catty, bitchy little girls who will not lead Britain into stability, and are not interested in reforming welfare or social care or life prospects for all us 18-30s who have been systematically fucked over by two consecutive political parties. Don’t forget that they started it.

Also, voting Labour is a vote for racism. I remember, when I was a child, the shit put through my door on a regular basis by Margaret Moran Labour MP (I think that’s our version of a senator) and the Lib Dem opposition when I lived on a gypsy site, and I remember all the shit both those parties used to say about us in the local newspaper, blaming us for everything that ever went wrong in their constituency because it was illegal to blame any other races any more and they needed some fabricated enemy to make up drama about. They have been cashing in on Anti-European sentiment ever since Brexit and, given that I’m married to a European, I can clearly see a vote for Labour is a vote against my own husband. He has found it nearly impossible to find a job since Brexit because of our surname, because of the assumptions people make about him being Eastern European. Labour won’t fix that, because they’re the party of the imaginary Common Working Man (and The Common Working Man voted for Brexit, remember? Because The Common Working Man reads the Daily Mail). Actually, Labour only WANT you to think they’re on your side. They’re actually the Petit Bourgeoisie CLAIMING to be For The Common People because they’re scared of being up against the wall come the revolution* and they all read The Guardian really. Anyway, in the unlikely event that Labour gain power and ride into Parliament on unicorns and try to stop Brexit, the country will degenerate into civil unrest and disorder due to the loud outspoken hooligans and yobs being all the ones who voted Brexit. Think this through: You REALLY don’t want them to stop it now that it’s been started. It’s the same reason that Trump cannot be removed from office by legal means. People will take to the streets and riot, which nobody wants. The situation is completely impossible.

*Which got canceled.

I cannot support a disorganized party, who have been locked in an unwarranted power grab since they got rid of Milliband. I cannot support a party filled with institutional racism. I cannot support a party who is outspoken against the SNP in Scotland, and if I was still in Scotland, I would not hesitate to vote SNP. But I am currently in England, which means I don’t have that choice. I feel really bad, but I physically cannot support Labour, I genuinely don’t think they will fix the mess in this country. A vote for Labour is a vote for everything to carry on the same as it currently is, only there’ll be a smiling face to sugarcoat it all for you.

So what about the Liberal Democrats? Um… that would be like voting for a vampire to run a bloodbank. They can make all sorts of claims and promises in their manifesto, because they are completely safe in the knowledge that they will never have to fulfil ANY of it. The closest they’ve ever come to running things was when they were in the coalition government, where the Conservatives ran things really and the Lib Dems could say they didn’t fulfil their promises because of the Conservatives. Just like Labour, they stand for nothing.

The Green Party are just confused and make more wild promises than the Lib Dems. It’s hard to take them seriously when they never even TRY to consider how they’re going to pay for all the things they claim they’ll do.

And the Conservatives and UKIP are evil bastards.

This leaves me in a quandary. I want to vote to change things, and I have never before been unsure about which way to vote, but no party is worth voting for this time. I know the danger of “protest votes” or not voting. I once skipped out of work on my lunch break to vote, because I wasn’t going to finish work until the polls closed (we only get one day to vote over here), it has always been important to me as a woman and as a member of the lowest social class in the UK, because of how hard men and women had to fight for people like me to be able to vote. But this time, I’m honestly not sure I can vote for anyone. Anyway, if I don’t vote for the prevailing party in my city, the ridiculous nature of the UK voting system means my vote will have been wasted anyway (it’s impossible for us to have a Liberal majority in Parliament, unless we also have a Liberal Prime Minister). So it’s with a heavy heart that I stare at the impossible situation and wish they’d called this election for 2 months later, so I’d be living abroad and therefore wouldn’t have to get involved in all this nonsense.

I’d like to reiterate that the adverts below this article are nothing to do with me. WordPress wants me to pay them to make the adverts go away for you all, but I can’t really afford it, so they keep putting more adverts here and making them more annoying and objectionable. Sorry.